


Rather be on Fire

by apollos



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Concussions, Flash Fic, M/M, Memory Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-05
Updated: 2016-10-05
Packaged: 2018-08-19 18:14:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8220355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apollos/pseuds/apollos
Summary: Jack suffers twice over.





	

**Author's Note:**

> title from fin song 8 (orange river remix) by greogry & the hawk.

Kent skates into Jack, knocking him into the boards. At once the world is quiet and full of white. There may be screams in the crowd, and there may be blood on the ice, and there may be a concussion forming out of the fog in Jack’s head, but for Jack everything is quiet and white.

Do not fear checking, he had told Bitty.

It’s a part of hockey.

The collision against the glass shattered Jack’s visor, which dug a gash into the right of his face. That’s where the blood is coming from. It pours in a steady river onto the ice. Jack’s tongue runs over his teeth, trying to keep them in check, and finds one missing. He spits aimlessly; the tooth falls into the river. He hears a faint _holy shit_ in a familiar voice. Color—red and blue—trickles back into his vision.

As Jack props himself between two of his teammates—he can’t think of their names—he sees a zebra dragging Kent away from the scene by the back of his sweater. Kent’s eyes are wide, terrified, and all of a sudden Jack is sixteen and trembling in somebody’s basement with cheap beer breath against his cheek.

“It’s okay,” Kent says, his mouth hovering—somewhere. Jack can’t see. Kent’s hands are his hips. “It’s cool, man. It’s cool.”

Quiet—paralyzed. And Jack is back on the ice, twenty-five and trapped between two teammates. They dump him at the bench, where the medics take over. They lead Jack to a nice, quiet room, and ask him questions that he cannot answers.

“Concussion,” Jack hears one of them say. “ _Shit._ Shit. Fuck.”

These are things Jack will not remember. The fog will encompass everything after the collision until he awakes in his apartment in Province to discover his mother coddling him. But what Jack does, and will always, remember:

Kent’s breath moving, tickling his lips, until it is his breath, and they’re kissing in the corner of somebody’s basement. It’s quick. Jack pulls away instantly and shoves Kent in the chest. Kent tumbles backward, falls on his ass gracelessly. “What the _fuck_?” Kent spits at him from the floor. Jack doesn’t say anything Jack walks out of somebody’s basement and walks back to the billet house, shaking, maybe from the cold, maybe from something else. Jack remembers every step of that walk.

“What happened?” he asks his mother.

“You were concussed by Kent Parson in your last game, sweetheart,” his mother says, after a second. “We were just talking about scrapbooking.”

“ _Scrapbooking_?”

“Bitty’s been wanting you to try it?”

That’s not true. “Where is Bitty?”

“He has an exam in French, he said, so he can’t be here yet.”

“What happened to Parson?”

“They’re looking into it.” His mother sighs, raising Jack’s hand to her lips. “Your father thinks it was definitely a dirty hit.”

A dirty hit—like a shove to the chest, a hand pulled out of somebody’s pants. The undeniable spite in Kent, Jack thinks. The fire. The passion. A dirty hit? Possibly? Could Jack see himself playing dirty? But Jack’s been alternating between clean and dirty all his life, constantly making himself a mess that must be cleaned up. And now, here he is, rendered a mess.

 But: he relents to Kent, a decade previous. The next day in the locker room, after everybody else has gone. “I’m sorry,” he says to Kent, as tenderly as possible. “I’m so sorry.”

"It’s okay,” Kent says, again. He pulls Jack into his arms. Jack—Jack lets it happen. Then they kiss. There’s a lot of biting, a lot of tongue, and Jack’s world goes quiet and white.

Kent is found innocent.

The next game against the Aces, Jack plays a clean game.


End file.
